Has Tony Abbott destroyed faith in government?

Roy Morgan and Newspoll released the latest polling today and the message it is sending should be worrying everyone. In simple voting terms Labor remains miles in front:

ALP (56.5%) big lead down slightly over L-NP (43.5%). The Palmer United Party increases its support to 7.5% (up 1%) – a new record high for PUP. If a Federal Election were held today the ALP would win in a landslide (56.5%, down 1% over
the past two weeks) over the L-NP (43.5%, up 1%) according to today’s multi-mode Morgan Poll.

This Morgan Poll on voting intention was conducted over the last two weekends (May 24/25 & May 31/June 1, 2014) with an Australia-wide cross-section of 3,247 Australian electors aged 18+. The ALP primary vote is at 38% (down 0.5%) whilst the L-NP primary vote is unchanged at 35%.

Among the minor parties Greens support is 11% (down 1%), support for the Palmer United Party (PUP) is 7.5% (up 1% to a new record high) and support for Independents/Others is 8.5% (up 0.5%).

Support for the Palmer United Party is highest in Palmer’s home State of Queensland (12.5%), but is also significant in South Australia (10%), Western Australia (7.5%) and Tasmania (7.5%) and lowest in the two largest States of Victoria (5.5%) and New South Wales (5%).

Same for Newspoll, with Bill Shorten now miles in front on preferred PM status. From The Australian:

More important for me is the question of “is the country headed in right direction?” from RM, which plumbed record lows:

“Confidence in government” has collapsed under the Tony Abbott’s Coalition regime, below even the disgraced and splintered Gillard and Rudd administrations, when he should still be enjoying an election honeymoon

I’ve also marked the point of Prime Minister Abbott’s election to the opposition leadership, shortly after which confidence in government collapsed. The 2011-14 period was marked by all sorts of events, many of which were diabolically difficult for government to address – climate change, the mining boom, a post-GFC world – but the one other common denominator of the period is PM Abbott’s leadership in opposition and power. He has also played a major role in the collapse.

It may seem a stretch but consider PM Abbott’s methodology of power. He was an extraordinarily aggressive opposition leader, totally unprepared to compromise on issues in which he shared in-principle support with the Labor party. Carbon pricing is the obvious example and there are many others. PM Abbott destroyed the consensus around climate change, the carbon price and the Gillard government through very successful demagoguery. In the process he ripped a very large hole in Australia’s faith in government.

Since his election, it hasn’t changed. PM Abbott has remained a pugnacious politician, unable to compromise and as such unable to rally the centre of the polity. He certainly confronts a difficult context, a real Budget crisis and historic economic adjustment, but his ruthless politics is in the way of generating a sympathetic consensus.

He has either chosen not to, or proven unable to, describe to the nation the real issues it confronts in China going ex-growth, the end of the mining boom, the end of the great credit boom, and the need to repair competitiveness after a 22 year run of excellent fortune. Even the phrase “end of entitlement” is not PM Abbott’s.

His narrative is ludicrously simple for the times: open for business, Labor’s debt and union corruption, budget repair. The pure asininity of this thinking perhaps helps explain why it’s creeping into the most unlikely and inappropriate moments, such as yesterday’s ill-judged “diggergate”.

PM Abbott is a pugilist not a consensus builder and his merciless solutions for the great Australian adjustment are now on display in a heartless Budget that occupies territory miles outside of accepted Australian values of equity but does very little to address the structural problems of the necessary economic adjustment.

At a time of growing strain in Australia’s political economy the politics of division, recalcitrance and party-favouritism is tearing Australian’s faith in government to shreds. The consequences are going to be material, as we saw last year with the election weighing heavily on the economy, beneath the skin and tissue of liberalism in Australian households lies the hard bone of paternalism. At the end of the day, most Australians reckon on the government to save them from real strife in the lucky country and it’s very unsettling for them to have that psychological prop undermined.

Unfortunately the RM index does not go further back so we can’t compare with past episodes of popular discontent. But it says something that since his election PM Tony Abbott hasn’t managed to breach the lows of confidence in government under Kevin Rudd.

Of course one can’t blame it all on one bloke. The list of political bastardy, blunders and bullshit of the past several electoral cycles is more than enough to explain the collapse of faith in our civil servants. Bill Shorten and Labor are now pursuing the same wrecker strategies of the Prime Minister in opposition. And the ultimate blame probably lies with Paul Keating, who pioneered the politics of obstructive self-rejection in his 1993 GST triumph.

Tony Abbott’s role is perhaps better described as totem than it is cause. But it’s not coincidence.